Selingman glanced towards the closed door.
"Supposing," he said, dropping his voice a little, "supposing I were to tell you, young man, that I entirely agreed with your friend? Supposing I were to tell you that, possibly by accident, he has stumbled upon the exact truth? What would you say then?"
Norgate shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," he observed, "we've agreed, haven't we, that a little lesson would be good for England? It might as well come now as at any other time."
"It will not come yet," Mr. Selingman went on, "but I will tell you what is going to happen."
His voice had fallen almost to a whisper, his manner had become portentous.
"Within a week or two," he said, "Germany and Austria will have declared war upon Russia and Servia and France. Italy will join the allies—that you yourself know. As for England, her time has not come yet. We shall keep her neutral. All the recent information which we have collected makes it clear that she is not in a position to fight, even if she wished to. Nevertheless, to make a certainty of it, we shall offer her great inducements. We shall be ready to deal with her when Calais, Ostend, Boulogne, and Havre are held by our armies. Now listen, do you flinch?"
The two men were still standing in the middle of the room. Selingman's brows were lowered, his eyes were keen and hard-set. He had gripped Norgate by the left shoulder and held him with his face to the light.
"Speak up," he insisted. "It is now or never, if you mean to go through with this. You're not funking it, eh?"
"Not in the least," Norgate declared.